Automated Liner Notes

Tidewater Intrigue Among the Submersibles
I drove 500 miles
just for the chance to
leap from the edge of your
pure white bliss
into a spoonful of
broken concrete

Buy One Get One Free
The morning sun ignites the
sky as scattered clouds drifting in
off the ocean go from silver to
crimson & back again like it
never even happened

Tapping on the Pavement w/a Spoon
Putting the blue sky on hold for a moment a sideways glance
allows you to see a little less than you saw first time around
all of it drenched in radiance & apprehension

Steel Pier Freeze-Out
Broken waves displace the tide
            & the sun tightens up like a fist
say whatever you want it's all true
                                          even when it's not
                              & there's 20 miles between you & your
                        mind (a distance
                                          you'll probably not cover today

Return of the Native

All things must find their proper time,
So why is it that you have come so late?
                                                      - Mi Fu

The day rides in on hydroponic murmurings
             adrift expendable, teeming
                      w/a little rust discoloration around the edges
                               lit up in Chinese neon
& whatever else it takes to download the shop manual
under ideal conditions
             ever adrift in the commerce of light & shadow

I was thinking of reinventing
the Mariana Trench while strumming the
latitude & longitude of a crooked smile
             as though it might cure the common
yearning love leaves in its wake
                      as we're still learning the shape the sky
             takes inside jagged cumulus smoke rings of
haze & broken shadow wings that
rake the sand
                      testing the pulse of Spanish guitars
                               that sleep in the palm trees

I never but momentarily retain 
             a pretense of having walked this far
resisting like orchids in the rain
                       these defining moments
         gone as soon & trembling frail
                       beneath a pale blue-green silver
                                     eye-of-albacore sky

Dividing Now From Forever

You have the choice to 
double up or double back

living inside a comic book
version of The Odyssey

with lots of CRASH, THUD, KA-BOOMs
& dialog balloons stuffed with those

dactylic hexameters that still ring like
stones in the sun

but outsourced to California 
where the shoreline has a memory that's 

always going to be deeper than
the history book you lost in high school

or that dry dive into the abyss
when no one's looking

West Coast Slide

The pale gray & blue sky opens just a little by noon

Remember to pay attention

Breathe in & breathe out                   okay
then what?

                        Try some new yoga poses:
                                    the Binge-Watcher
                                    the One-Legged Seagull
                                    the Chainsmoker

although I'd rather spend my time running tropical interference
while wearing a ceremonial lifejacket & a snorkel

                        retracing the steps of a last tango...

& I told her

            You can bury my body
                                    down by the oceanside
            so my old evil spirit
                        can catch the next wave & ride

Boxing the Compass

I saw the reflection & heard the echo

            put one word next to another & so on

Rebel Rebel meets Louie Louie
midway thru The Golden Voyage of Sinbad

Blue slab of sky tilted above & somewhat
behind the tortured Asian pear tree

            how so gently applied

                        cooking time 60 to 70 minutes
                        depending on your point of view

Accordions in the cypress
by way of a sonic investment

& those cold blue flames under the sea
like a crash course in Taoist alchemy

Sailing to Tonga on a Wire Frame Mattress

The bronze sky tips down into the
swarming turquoise sea
         & you're prying your shadow off the sidewalk
                  or speaking in tongues like a seagull
                  in a trance

it's just what some call love

         & the wind machine in the eucalyptus has a
                  blown gasket & is burning oil

                           like my heart I guess

         Maybe if you could turn the torch aloe inside out
                  you'd have a better idea where all this is going

& dragging the kodachrome sunset behind you
you sew it all up with silver thread
         as the mile-long shadows stretch out for that
                                                                long haul into night

Did you hear the one about the owl who married a goat

e  a  r  t  h  q  u  a  k  e
                                           "Did you feel that?"
            a blip on the Richter scale
                                                             tectonic shift
an interglacial hiccup prompting a tsunami warning
bearing down on a
                                         Bikini collision course

          (not the two-piece bathing suit
          but the atoll in the Marshall Islands where
          the United States detonated 23 nuclear devices
          between 1946 & 1958 imagine
          what kind of surf that must have generated)

Nothing out of the ordinary
                                                       Rocking the boat
High seas at low tide
                                         (operatic)
                                                              Calling down the thunder

Mumbo Jumbo

It was a 20,000 Leagues Under the
Sea meets Sailing to Byzantium situation
seen through a Ziggy Starfish prism
on Topanga Beach

Footprints in wet sand

The sound of waves in a bottle cap

but like all the hydraulic lifts & power tools it takes to
fully equip a karma repair shop
& the Dalai Lama drops by to have a beer at closing time
all the angels, demons, hungry ghosts & sad-eyed buddhas
slip out the back door into the lemon light of a midsummer sun-
set filtering down through the abracadabra palm trees that
bow & sway in the parking lot

& you were there pretending you weren't
as the sky tipped back like a bottomless cup of kool-aid
& I almost forgot to breathe

Shiva's Little Grind

Silver-green eucalyptus leaves
shimmering in the wind
like a school of sardines in the shallows

         Another day it might be like the way it felt to
         read Confessions of an English Opium Eater
         in 1822
                              the fog rolling in from the beach
the sun an opaque disk of tarnished 
silver nailed to the sky

         & maybe she walks in beneath it
                  as I reach out to her
                           with two or more hands

Her eyes like dark stretches of intertidal static
raking the dust of Darwinian succession
in blue suede huaraches